ECMPS Support

Mailbag has returned from a long hiatus with a couple of new questions based on actual questions asked through technical support.

If you are not able to attend the Stakeholder Meeting

Question

I will not be able to attend the Stakeholder meeting on November 19th. Is there a way for me to find out what was covered at the meeting?

-- Not Able to Attend

Answer

Dear Not Able to Attend,

The Stakeholder meeting on November 19th will cover a variety of materials. The preliminary agenda is listed here. This agenda includes a lot of valuable material which sources and DAHS vendors should review if they are unable to attend the meeting. Fortunately, the materials will be made available after the meeting.

After the meeting, the PowerPoint presentations will be posted on the EPA Web site, and that will be announced here as well. In addition, several weeks after the meeting, we will post audiovisual presentations from the meeting which you will be able to watch online from this support Web site. You can view presentations from past Stakeholder meetings by clicking here.

When to use the CTP and when to use Production

Question

I am responsible for a large number of sources. Some of them have transitioned to ECMPS and some have not. Should I be using the CTP or the production version?

-- Confused about Versions

Answer

Dear Confused,

Let's see if I can clear up your confusion. There are indeed two versions of the ECMPS Client Tool. Currently, the most widely used version is the ECMPS Client Tool Preview (CTP). This version is for testing. By testing, we mean sources and DAHS vendors should be using it to test their XML files and become familiar with how the Client Tool works. In addition, stakeholders can use the CTP to evaluate their data in the Client Tool in order to see what corrections need to be made to their data based on new reporting requirements or old reporting requirements that were not checked previously in MDC.

It is important to keep in mind that the CTP is identical to the production version with one very important exception. The exception is that the data in the CTP is test data. The data in the CTP was originally loaded back in April 2008 based on a snapshot of official data taken at that time, but it has not been updated since then. That means that any official data which you have submitted since April 2008 is not in the CTP. The other important affect on the CTP data being test data is that changes to the data in the CTP, even if submitted through CTP, DO NOT affect official data.

The production version of the Client Tool is the version which should be used by everyone who has transitioned to ECMPS and needs to report official data using XML. In addition, anyone who is supporting the submission of official data (e.g., DAHS vendors, stack testers, consultants) should use the production version. This allows you to work with the actual data which is essential to providing support to the official submitter. If you are supporting the official submitter, but will not be making submissions, you need to be made a retrieve agent. This will allow you to view all of the official data, but you will NOT be able to submit the data. You can learn more about ECMPS agents here.

One final thought is that the CTP has been very valuable for preparing sources to make the transition to officially submitting through the production version. The sources who have used the CTP to test before submitting officially using the production version have had the least amount of difficulty in working with the production version. Since around 70% of sources will not have made the transition to ECMPS by fourth quarter 2008, there should be a lot of people using the CTP to prepare to test prior to the mandatory use of the Client Tool for first quarter 2008 submissions. If you would like to register to test, click here.

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